§ 2. Let us pass to consider the notions ‘Nature,’ ‘Natural,’ ‘Conformity to Nature.’ I assume--in order to obtain a principle distinct from ‘Self-realisation,’[72]--that the ‘Nature’ to which we are to conform is not each one’s own individual nature, but human nature generally, considered either apart from or in relation to its environment: that we are to find the standard of right conduct in a certain type of human existence which we can somehow abstract from observation of actual human life. Now in a certain sense every rational man must, of course, “conform to nature”; that is, in aiming at any ends, he must adapt his efforts to the particular conditions of his existence, physical and psychical. But if he is to go beyond this, and conform to ‘Nature’ in the adoption of an ultimate end or paramount standard of right conduct, it must be on the basis--if not of strictly Theological assumptions, at any rate--of the more or less definite recognition of Design exhibited in the empirically known world. If we find no design in nature, if the complex processes of the world known to us through experience are conceived as an aimless though orderly drift of change, the knowledge of these processes and their laws may indeed limit the aims of rational beings, but I cannot conceive how it can determine the ends of their action, or be a source of unconditional rules of duty. And in fact those who use ‘natural’ as an ethical notion do commonly suppose that by contemplating the actual play of human impulses, or the physical constitution of man, or his social relations, we may find principles for determining positively and completely the kind of life he was designed to live. I think, however, that every attempt thus to derive ‘what ought to be’ from ‘what is’ palpably fails, the moment it is freed from fundamental confusions of thought. For instance, suppose we seek practical guidance in the conception of human nature regarded as a system of impulses and dispositions, we must obviously give a special precision to the meaning of “natural”; since in a sense, as Butler observes, any impulse is natural, but it is manifestly idle to bid us follow Nature in this sense: for the question of duty is never raised except when we are conscious of a conflict of impulses, and wish to know which to follow. Nor does it help us to say that the supremacy of Reason is Natural, as we have started by assuming that what Reason prescribes is conformity to Nature, and thus our line of thought would become circular: the Nature that we are to follow must be distinguished from our Practical Reason, if it is to become a guide to it. How then are we to distinguish ‘natural impulses’--in the sense in which they are to guide rational choice--from the unnatural? Those who have occupied themselves with this distinction seem generally to have interpreted the Natural to mean either the _common_ as opposed to the rare and exceptional, or the _original_ as opposed to what is